And would the 8 passengers for London Gatwick please board?

A reasonably long walk from the main terminal at Geneva are the B gates where British Airways operates its services to London Heathrow and Gatwick.

Passing Swiss Passport Control you go up an escalator to the circular terminal area.

When I arrived it was fairly busy with probably a couple of hundred passengers occupying the seats in the area of the gates. An easyjet flight arrived and almost everyone go up to board as soon as they announced that the boarding was open.

About 10 minutes later BA announced boarding for Gatwick. And 8 people go up to board.

Yes, 8 people on an Airbus 319. I was the third passenger on board:

Once we were all on board – they even made the announcement about yellow tagged bags going under the seat in front to keep the overhead bin space free – we pulled away to a clear crisp morning. You can see how little snow there is on the hills beyond the jet bridge.

As we pulled back I took a picture of the cabin:

5 crew and 8 passengers – someone is not making money. The crew reassured me that the plane had been nearly full on the way out – a 7am departure on the Sunday after most Private (called Public) Schools closed for the Christmas Break. State schools close today in most cases.

As you can imagine the flight was not overly onerous for the crew and they were up for a chat which is fine with me. They offered me three choices of meal – the one booked for the sector, the one from the outbound and a left over crew meal which was a full English Breakfast. I was good and opted for the cold plate from the way out, plus the yoghurt from the outbound meal:

It was pretty tasty. There was plenty of time for Duty Free sales, although the sunglasses I wanted were out of stock.

Very soon we were coming up to the English Channel and flew overhead of Dover – see White Cliffs below:

About 30 minutes later we were landing at a frosty Gatwick.

We disembarked in to the terminal, and although I was connecting I had to exit and re-enter security via the public part of the terminal – another good reason to avoid Gatwick.

This has to be one of the lightest loaded aircraft I have ever flown. I did one fly by myself on a Turboprop plane operated by USAirways from San Francisco. The crew did say that the sector outbound from Gatwick had operated nearly full, which was pretty good for a 7am departure on a Sunday. The aircraft and some of the crew were on their next to Rome, and were hoping for some nice weather.